I guess I just want to say “in conclusion” that the vast majority of voters that didn’t vote were giving you your Starbucks or your Taco Bell.
This is a very clear and succinct description of something I’ve been struggling to articulate for years. Affluent liberals can tell their boss they’re taking a long lunch to vote, and they don’t understand why shift workers don’t do the same.
Everything you just said is factually incorrect. Gaetz didn’t even have a confirmation. He gave up the nomination before confirmation hearings could start.
Also, you genuinely need to look up, “unanimous consent.” It’s a procedural method the Senate uses to speed up votes; if just one Democrat refuses to give unanimous consent to a vote, the Senate is forced to take a roll call vote and open the floor up to debate. It’s one of the many procedural hurdles Democrats could be using to block Trump’s agenda if they had the willpower.
The number of excuses people are willing to make for Democrats is astounding. I’ve been watching the Republicans obstruct the Democrats for the last sixteen years. Meanwhile, Trump has been in power for a month, and Democrats are fast-tracking his appointments, even when it’s a conspiracy theorist to lead the FBI or an anti-vaxer to head HHS. They’ve given unanimous consent to Trump’s agenda 345 times so far. You should be calling them every day and demanding they act like an actual opposition party, not justifying their collaboration with the fascists. Who knows, maybe if they show voters that they’re actually willing to stand up and fight for something, they might actually win a fucking election.
Astrology daughter. NFT son will be bankrupt in your basement, no matter what. Astrology daughter might marry a rich guy.
I could ask you to explain what you think I’m not reading, but I think we both know this is just a ridiculous cop-out, and you simply don’t want to engage with facts that contradict your worldview.
This is conjecture, not evidence, but if leftists really are that powerful of a voting block, that seems like further proof that the Democrats should adopt leftist policies.
I am saying that Democrats perform better with a progressive message than a centrist one. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to look up the party platforms and stump speeches from these years and compare which candidates were pushing leftist platforms and which were centrist. You can compare Biden’s BBB plan, which contains child tax credit extensions, universal pre-k, ACA subsidies, affordable housing, and dozens of other progressive programs to the, “economic opportunity,” platform of business loans and first-time homebuyer’s credits that Harris ran on. You can look up Obama’s stump speeches regarding homeowner bailouts and compare them to the HAMP program he actually put in place.
The evidence is pretty clear; voters go to Democrats when they offer a strong, progressive vision for the country, and they abandon them when they pursue centrist policies. Yet liberals like Harris and Clinton both lost by courting, “moderate,” Republicans. They’ve convinced themselves to ignore the facts and follow the, “common sense,” idea that they need to move further towards the center. Even you have dismissed every piece of information I’ve presented you and instead continue to insist, without evidence, that being is a liberal centrist is the best strategy. This is why liberals continue to defeat themselves.
In 2008. Barack Obama beat Clinton by running an extremely progressive campaign, which included homeowner bailouts, universal healthcare, and ending our foreign wars. He then abandoned all of those promises and governed as a centrist.
It’s also worth noting that, despite being a centrist, Biden’s platform was very progressive. In fact, Bernie Sanders helped write it. Unfortunately, centrists like Manchin and Sinema killed that legislation, even though it was very popular.
A better question is how many times has a purely centrist message won? Because I’m struggling to think of an example besides Bill Clinton.
A) Poll numbers are all hypothetical. Non-hypothetical poll numbers are called election results. In every poll, Sanders was beating Trump by more points than any of the Democratic nominees. We’ll never know for sure if Sanders would have won, but our best evidence showed he would have performed better than the Democratic nominee.
B) Yes, a coordinated effort by the Democratic party blocked Sanders in 2016 and 2020. He couldn’t overcome this institutional opposition, so the Democrats’ preferred candidates won the primaries. One of those candidates lost in 2016, while the other won in 2020 but imploded before 2024. We are currently living with the results of the Democrats’ attempts to select a, “centre-left winger who actually has a chance of winning,” and it turns out those results are almost entirely losses.
Sanders. His polling numbers were better against Trump than the last three Democratic candidates, but the party leadership organized to block him in favor of centrist liberals. Biden was the only one of those liberals who was able to eke out a win against Trump, and he was on track to lose worse than Carter lost to Regan when he dropped his reelection bid.
Half of those people lost, and one of the winner’s reelection campaign was going so badly that he had to resign. Meanwhile, the, “far-left,” alternative to them had more favorable polling numbers in the last 3 elections. After the last 10 years, I’m not sure there’s any serious way to argue that the center-left are the only ones who have a shot of winning.
Yeah, I had the same reaction over the summer when people rediscovered the 2016 lawsuit that accused Trump of raping a 13 year old. Everyone was like, “Why is no one covering this???” Because they did. Eight years ago. Nothing new happened, it just got picked up by social media again.
I’m sure if they just go little further right they’ll get 'em next time.
It’s literally the first comment, dude. I detail a huge fucking list of powerful people who fucked up so bad the Democrats lost to one of the least popular Presidents of all time, then ended it with, “Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters.” It’s literally a politicians job to win elections, but this community is full of memes blaming the left because the Democrats suck at their job.
No, they’re both doing the same thing, for the same reason.
Yes, but you’re framing one as victims, while the other you’re treating with contempt. Might want to examine what you’ve internalized that makes you feel that way.
Bruh, you were the one who brought up the minority vote, and you did so as a ‘refutation’ to the idea that letting Trump into power is something that is going to kill minorities.
A) I brought up minority groups abandoning Harris because you brought up how people who didn’t vote for her were betraying minorities. B) I never said Trump wasn’t going to get minorities killed. He’s gonna kill a lot of people, and I’m sure disproportionate numbers of minorities will wind up dead. C) If this many people, across all demographics, decided they were either better off voting for the fascist or indifferent to the fascists victory, what does that tell you about how Democratic leadership is going?
Anyway, good luck mulling that stuff over, Pug.
Literally and explicitly said, to you, in this conversation, that the left wasn’t the lynchpin of any of this. But who needs facts when you have windmills to tilt against?
Last point I’m gonna make here, then I need to move on with my life. I’m not saying that if the left united behind Harris it would have turned the tide, I’m just responding to your demand for obedience from the left instead of leadership from the party. For the record, no, I highly doubt that, if all the people who cast protest votes instead voted for Harris, it would have changed the outcome.
For Harris to have won, she would have needed to win all the votes she lost to apathy. Most people who don’t like a candidate don’t stay home in protest or vote third party, they just convince themselves that one vote doesn’t matter and decide to do laundry or cook dinner instead of standing in a poll line.
So I’m not gonna blame voters for being unmotivated, I’m gonna blame Harris for not motivating them. I’m not going to blame protest voters for withholding their vote, I’m gonna blame Harris for not addressing their protest. I’m not gonna blame critics of Harris for being too vocal, I’m going to blame Harris for giving us so much to criticize. Because only an idiot would think it’s more productive to scold the 275 million Americans who didn’t vote for Harris instead of demanding change from the handful of Democrats who run the party. Now that’s tilting against windmills, Pug.
So, when leftists don’t vote for the party, they’re being unreasonable, whiney children who are enabling facism. But when minority voters don’t vote for the Democrats, they’re the helpless victims of fascist propaganda? Cool, I guess we’ve reached the racist, “savior,” trope portion of the liberal coping process. If only those poor minorities hadn’t been led astray by all those leftists and fascists, right Pug?
Fucking incredible how far you’ll go to blame everyone but the people responsible for the loss. Oh, did Harris’ shitty campaign cause widespread voter apathy? Don’t blame the campaign for that, blame the people who talked about it too openly. Oh, you wanted a, “United Front,” against Trump? Do you blame Harris for failing to unite the party behind her? You know, the fucking job of a leader? Nope, it’s the lefts fault for not falling in line.
Like, I don’t even know what to do with this anymore. You’re watching the Democratic coalition collapsed under the party’s mismanagement, and you’re blaming the coalition instead of party. Get a grip, Pug, FFS.
Yet simultaneously, you claim that voters punishing American minorities with genocide and a fascist regime is justified, because of the sins of the Dem elite.
Yeah, this, “Won’t someone think of the minorities!?!?” shit would carry more weight if minority groups weren’t also abandoning the Democrats. Latino support for the Democratic ticket dropped 8 points between 2020 and 2024. Muslim support dropped 49%. Black support for Harris dropped as well, even if it was mostly among men. And I’m just going by exit polls; I’m not even counting the people who stopped showing up.
Maybe you can start parsing out which minority groups have the most power, and then start blaming them too. That might let you scapegoat someone else a little longer, so you postpone holding the people with actual power accountable a little bit longer.
This is just a long-winded, inverted version of the aphorism about liberals’ paradoxical view of progressives; they’re a small, niche group, and the Democrats shouldn’t try to appease them because they’ll just alienate mainstream voters by courting this insignificant block of voters. However, progressives are somehow also a large, powerful cabal that can be blamed for every major Democratic loss.